“Don’t you worry about that. There ain’t gonna be any reward.” The ranchman swung down from the saddle and descended from the bluff by way of a wooded gulch at the right. Ten minutes later, Black saw him emerge and begin to cross the rock slide toward the big boulders. Presently Prowers stopped and shouted. “You fellow in the rocks, I wantta talk with you.” There came no answer. He moved cautiously a little closer, rifle ready for action. “We got you, fellow. Better come outa there an’ talk turkey. I don’t aim for to turn you over to the sheriff if you’re anyways reasonable,” he explained. “Wotcha want with me?” a voice called from the rocks. “Wantta have a pow-wow with you. Maybe you ’n’ me can do business together. No can tell.” “Who are you?” “Name’s Jake Prowers. No friend of Clint Reed if that’s what’s eatin’ you?” After a delay of several seconds, a figure appeared and moved closer. The ranchman saw in the man’s hand the gleam of an automatic revolver. The fugitive stopped a few yards from Prowers and eyed him suspiciously. “Wotcha want to chew the rag about?” he asked. Jake sat down on a rock with an air so casually careless that a tenderfoot might not have guessed that he was ready for instant action if need be. “Fellow, sit down,” he said. “We got all day before us. I don’t reckon you got any engagements you have to keep immediate--not since you had that one at the Diamond Bar K ranch last night.” “I don’t getcha.” “Sure you do. No use throwin’ a sandy with me. I tell you, fellow, I’m playin’ my own hand. Me, I don’t like Reed any more’n you do. So, entrey noo, as the frog-eaters say, we’ll take it for granted you were the uninvited guest at Reed’s ranch a few hours since. Yore work wasn’t first-class, if you ask old Jake Prowers. You didn’t burn but a small part of the wheat and you didn’t get Clint anyways adequate.” “Meaning he wasn’t croaked?” Cig demanded out of the corner of his mouth. “I’ll say he wasn’t, by jiminy by jinks. But I don’t know as that’ll help you any when his boys catch you.” “They ain’t gonna catch me,” the New York crook boasted, his brain seething with suspicion of the dried-up little man in front of him. Jake Prowers weighed this, a skeptical smile on his thin lips. “Interesting, but unreliable,” he decided aloud, in regard to the other’s prediction. “How do you aim to prevent it? The sheriff has got you cut off from the railroad. Food don’t grow on bushes in these hills. You’re done, unless--” “You gotta ’nother guess coming,” the thug retorted. “Forget that stuff. I ain’t no hobo. Come to a showdown these country boobs’ll find me right there with a gun. I’m a good man to lay off.”